Does anybody know what kind of weapon Steve McQueen's character Reese had when he was in the trench? The safety mechanism on it seems rather odd and I want to find more about that gun? In addition, what kind of add-on was he working on for it? It looks like he taped two or three extra magazines together to make some kind of stand for his weapon.
shareM3A1 "Grease Gun" with 30 Round Magazine. This weapon was produced to supplement the Thompson sub-machine gun. The USA factories could not keep up with the demand for the "Thompson" due to it's many machined parts and it's time consuming manufacture time. The Thompson was and is a very well made and reliable weapon. With the manufactoring being slow to produce the Thompson a call came out for a similar weapon that would be faster and easier to make. Hence, the M3A1 (the GIs called it the "grease gun"). The appearance of it is reminds one of the garage implement. By the way the Thompson in the 1940's cost approx $300.00 to produce. The Grease Gun around $3.50. That's a heck of a difference. The grease gun was from stamped metal and sloppily put together but this wound up being good! Due to inclement weather and foul conditions such as dirt, sand, etc... the grease gun rarely jammed. A reliable weapon with enough accuracy at the closer ranges (a good close quarter weapon for city street fighting and also jungle fighting). As for the taped magazines; this was the habit of many GIs. This custom was so that the user could reload more quickly under fire. Not only did the GIs do this to the Grease Gun but also the Thompson and other magazine fed weapons. The magazines taped in this fashion were close at hand for reloading.
Another major advantage to the M3 was unusual foresight on the part of the contractors & US government: The M3 came with an additional barrel for 9mm parabellum & the reciever would accept wermacht magazines for the MP38&40, so GIs could use captured enemy mags & ammunition thereby reducing the risk of exhausting your ammo & being caught unarmed. The M3 served until 1963 when it was withdrawn from the US inventory, but many GIs managed to scrounge one as it was far more reliable than Stoner's tempermental child the M16. (When the 'whiz kids' approved the M16, it was issued with inferior ammunition & no cleaning gear. It had a terrifying rate of failure due to jamming.) The M3 was issued in job lots in the 40's & 50's, mostly to armour crew. The weapons were eventually cycled out of 1st line service & into guard units, where an enterprising troop could surreptitiously see that they made their way to the 'Nam... for a small fee for shipping & handling. It's simplicity made it incredibly durable & when it did jam, the same simplicity made it quick & easy to un-jam. Many wermacht soldiers escaped Germany & sold their services to Le Legion Estrange, winding up in the souatheast asian theatre. They took easily portable equipment with them, eg:personal wepaons so ammunition & magazines were still available for troops carrying the M3 in 'Nam.
Because of it's slower rate of fire, the M3 was more accurate than most any smg. It was a weapon ahead of it's time, an unsung hero just like most of the grunts that humped it.
Semper Fi!
~Have you sent the "Don't shoot, we're pathetic" message yet?~
I didn't know that the first M-16's didn't have cleaning gear, but they sure had the habit of binding up with the bolt open. The only solution for that (because it can't be disassembled with the bolt open) was to pound the muzzle on something solid (rock, tree) to drive the bolt home. Figured that one out all by myself:-0
The M-16A1 with the "forward assist" was a fine improvement; a button to beat on in hope it would drive the bolt forward.. simply an attempt to treat the symptom and ignore the disease.
I'm glad I wasn't around when a drill sergeant caught you pounding the muzzle of your m-16 on "something solid".
The purposed of the forward assist is not to drive the bolt forward if has binded/jammed, but to make sure the bolt is fully seated.
I've used every version of the m-16, from the m-16 a1 to the m-4 carbine. While using an m-16 a1 in training ops (they give us the old stuff to beat up in the field), I had a bolt get stuck as you described - I didn't have to beat the muzzle on anything; rather I had to lay down and pull back on the charging handle with about 5 times the usual amount of force required. Out of the hundred of blank rounds fired during a 3 week period, I only had that one difficulty (keep in mind this was last summer, with a rifle that was about 30 years old!!!).
That said, I can't imagine being the first group of recruits to enter VN with the unproben m16, I think I would have asked to have my m14 back.
Thanks for the info!
cool65triumphrider wrote:
I didn't know that the first M-16's didn't have cleaning gear, but they sure had the habit of binding up with the bolt open. The only solution for that (because it can't be disassembled with the bolt open) was to pound the muzzle on something solid (rock, tree) to drive the bolt home. Figured that one out all by myself:-0
The M-16A1 with the "forward assist" was a fine improvement; a button to beat on in hope it would drive the bolt forward.. simply an attempt to treat the symptom and ignore the disease.
I believe that should be La Legion Etrangere (or Etranger), not Estrange
shareVery interesting -- good info given on the M3A1 "Grease Gun." This weapon was featured on The History Channel's "Tales of the Gun" during an episode about the guns of WWII. It was manufactured by the Guide Lamp Division of General Motors. The cost, while a lot cheaper than the $300 Thompson sub-machine gun, was not $3.50 -- it was more like $20.00. Still, that was plenty cheap. The gun was made of mostly stamped steel welded together -- only the bolt and the barrel were machined, and fairly crudely machined at that. Not crudely in the sense of poorly made, just not a lot of polishing and other refinements found on more expensive weapons.
BTW, never mentioned is the fact that the M3A1 is .45 ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol) caliber, same as the M1A1 Thompson sub-machine gun and the M1911A1 semi-automatic pistol manufactured by Colt, Springfield, Singer, Remington, and other manufacturers. Soldiers armed with the grease gun invariably also carried the .45 automatic as a sidearm. This meant that ammo was both plentiful and common to weapons carried by virtually all U.S. Army personnel. This made the 9mm Parabellum conversion fairly rare -- it was mainly issued to Rangers and other troops likely to be working behind enemy lines and more likely to be able to locate German 9mm Para. ammunition. A grease gun with the 9mm Parabellum conversion kit would be a very valuable collector's item today!
maybe splitting hairs here for some...but steve's weapon was actually (and correctly for 1944/45) a M3 sub machine gun NOT a M3A1. the diffence was the visable cocking handle as mentioned by the guy who started this thread. the M3A1 was a refined (read cheaper/simplyfied)version that among other minor differences substituted a finger hole in the bolt which was used to cock the gun. it may seem minor to some but the inclusion of a 'correct' type weapon is a major effort in historical accuracy by the crew IMHO. especially due to the fact that 90+/-% of M3's were converted to A1 status by 1962 when this film was made.
shareI maybe splitting hairs here for some...but steve's weapon was actually (and correctly for 1944/45) a M3 sub machine gun NOT a M3A1. the diffence was the visable cocking handle as mentioned by the guy who started this thread. the M3A1 was a refined (read cheaper/simplyfied)version that among other minor differences substituted a finger hole in the bolt which was used to cock the gun. it may seem minor to some but the inclusion of a 'correct' type weapon is a major effort in historical accuracy by the crew IMHO. especially due to the fact that 90+/-% of M3's were converted to A1 status by 1962 when this film was made.
shareJust a minor point, but it seems the only "safety" on the "grease gun" was the hinged flap on the ejection port that, when closed, prevented the bolt from going forward. At least that seems like the only thing Reese did each time he moved somewhere.
shareYou are correct, the 'dust cover' was the only safety on the M3.
shareIn 1981 I was an Army Specialist assigned to a Mechanized Infantry unit in Germany. We still had four M3A1s in our Arms Room. They were usually issued to our mechanics. Every now and then our government gets its money's worth from something. A twenty dollar weapon used for almost forty years! AW
shareI was in Neu-Ulm Germany 83 to 85 and the Mech Infantry unit across the bridge from us used the Grease Guns on gate guard duty.
shareNice treatise on the WWII U.S. "grease gun" by the poster named 'wrentree,' but the weapon Steve McQueen uses in "Hell Is For Heroes" was the (first model) M3 grease gun, NOT a (second model) M3A1, as mentioned.
The M3 grease gun had a external cocking lever handle on the right side of the weapon's receiver to facilitate the chambering of a round. Pulling this handle rearward carried the gun's bolt back, the release of which then pushed it forward, stripping a round off the top of the magazine into the barrel to make the weapon ready to fire.
The later M3A1 model did away with this lever handle entirely and instead used a cut-out, or depression, in the bolt itself to allow the firer's finger to be inserted and manually pull the bolt to the rear. There were several other modifications added to the M3A1 model, among which were a larger ejection port, a stronger cover spring, a larger oiler-can tube, a magazine filler added to the wire stock, and a guard for the magazine catch.
The first model M3 was the grease gun that saw combat in WWII, and the gun used by Steve McQueen in "Hell Is For Heroes." The second model M3A1 didn't make it into service before the war in Europe ended.
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Everyone in my unit wanted the "grease gun" when we went to the field. You could hook it it to your web belt during chow so you could use both hands.
shareWhen I was in the "old army" (Basic Training 1961) we fired the "grease gun"
but I never favored the weapon. The thing was empty in a second and I couldn't
hit anything more than 15 feet away.
"Many troubled things have been in my life, a few actually happened."
---Mark Twain
I am not a veteran, but I have rented and fired a .45ACP Savage M3A1 at a local shooting range. It has a slow rate of fire (circa. 450 RPM), and the magazines are real "thumb-busters" to reload, unless you use the built-in loading tool on the wire stock. One correction: the 9mm conversion uses the British STEN magazine, not the MP40. The intention was to furnish resistance groups in Europe with a cheap weapon that could use German ammunition, and an existing (STEN) 9mm magazine. As it turned out, the usual US firearm supplied to resistance groups was the M1 carbine (the most widely produced US firearm in WW2). Logically, the M3 should have been designed to use the easier-to-load Thompson magazine, but the optional 9mm requirement to use STEN magazines precluded this. By the way, most war movies ("Battle of the Bulge". The Dirty Dozen") show the M3 firing at an unrealistically high RPM. The only war film I recall that shows the low rate of fire of the M3 is "The Eagle Has Landed", when the Rangers assault the church.
share